TRIM is a function of newer SSDs that allows newer operating systems (like Windows Vista, Windows 7, and newer Ubuntu versions) to fully erase the sector when data is deleted from it.  Normally, hard drives have their initial sector marked as free space, but the old data actually remains behind.  When it comes time for data to be written to this “free space”, the drive has to fully remove the old data before the new data is saved.  Repeat this step over and over again, and it can have a noticeable impact on the drive’s performance.

With older SSD drives, and even some low cost SSDs that you get today, TRIM support is not available.  There’s debate over whether defrag is effective or not for these drives, or whether a method known as Tony TRIM (which is based on a write up from this post) has the same effect as native TRIM.

From my understanding, defrag alone will make no difference to an SSD drive.  Files can be saved on the hard drive across sectors that aren’t in alignment.  In the case of a platter hard drive, the function of a defrag aligns all the sectors together so that the hard drive head doesn’t have to go “seeking” for the next segment of the file.  It just moves onto the next sector.   With seeks times being incredibly low on an SSD, there is barely any point to defragging the hard drive.  In fact, some would argue that defragging an older SSD makes performance worse, since the old data left behind from a sector being moved during a defrag still needs to be erased before new data can be written.

The idea behind Tony TRIM is actually quite brilliant.  You start by running a defrag on the SSD (with a program like PerfectDisc 11) in a fashion that aligns all the free space sectors together.  Not all defrag programs do this.  Some only concentrate on moving files into sector alignment.  After aligning all the free space sectors, you use a tool like FreeSpaceCleaner FF, which clears out the data from any free space sectors.  In the end, this combo has the same effect as TRIM.  But does it improve an SSD drive’s performance? 

My initial run of Tony TRIM didn’t improve performance.  In fact it made things slower during boot up.  My drive may not respond the same way as an OCZ drive does to the FastSpaceCleaner program, which writes 1’s to the drive sectors in order to simulate a complete sector clean.  My drive may require 0’s to be written like a normal platter drive would.  Written 1’s to a drive that wants 0’s for free space indicators makes things worse, cause the drive sees the 1’s as old data, which as explained before, need to be erased before the new data can be written.

I may give it another go just to see if there is any truth to running it a couple of times to see any noticeable effect.  For the time being though, I seem to get the best performance by leaving the drive alone.

Back when netbooks first started catching on, every manufacturer released netbooks with the exact same specs.  Atom N270, 1GB RAM, either an 80GB spindle or 8-16GB SSD hard drive, and a 10.1″ 1024×600 screen.  Designs of the hardware varied (with Dell & HP leading the way in my opinion), but the hardware inside did not change.  The Atom N270 combined with the awful idea of a 600px height screen was enough to turn people off from the idea of netbooks.  Trying to use the internet on these devices yielded mixed results with this combo.

Intel’s on-board 945 graphics chip was not powerful enough to render Aero effects in Windows Vista / 7 in a smooth and snappy fashion, nor was it able to do any type of h.264 or other video decoding (with mpeg2 being an exception).  As a result, all video content had to be rendered by the Atom N270, which was already being taxed by the bloated Windows OS (and I mean bloated in the sense that Windows never took netbooks seriously and never optimized it for this class of hardware.  Some argue Windows 7 helps with this, and I agree, however the CPU is still taxed with most functions).  nVidia’s Ion chips brought a breath of life into the stale netbook market, providing modest 3D & 2D hardware acceleration, but there were only a select few manufacturers choosing to add Ion chips.

This problem was compounded by Microsoft’s announcement that they would put restrictions on the hardware specs that vendors would be allowed to put into netbooks in order to use the cheapest version of Windows, Windows Starter Edition.  They limited vendors to the standard cookie cutter 1Gb of RAM and 1024×600 screens, effectively stifling innovation in this space.  They also gimped the personalization of Windows Starter by not allowing the user to change the background picture.

There was hope that Intel’s Pinetrail Atom chips would finally give the netbook market a real performance boost.  All they did tough was embed the GPU and chipset functionality into the Atom CPU.  They did make slight improvements in the clock speed and lower power usage a touch, but it won’t ultimately make netbooks any snappier.

Some would say that this move by Intel to incorporate the chipset and GPU into the Atom CPU was anti-competitive.  It blocks nVidia from being able to have their original Ion product naitively integrated into the new Pinetrail netbooks.  nVidia has released Ion2 to counter this, but there’s no performance improvements, it’s just the Ion product minus the chipset component.  The one nice feature with Ion2 is the Optimous technology.  This allows a netbook (or laptop) to use the built in Intel graphics for regular use (which has better power management than the Ion), and then switch on the fly to the Ion GPU when needed (for video decoding, 3d rendering, etc.).

Since pinetrail netbooks have started hitting the market, the hardware specs are suffering a repeat of the cookie cutter treatment.  This time, we’re getting an Atom N450, 1Gb of RAM, and the 1024×600 screen.  Such an improvement…

What’s the solution?  It’s actually kind of simple, but it’s doubtful the hardware vendors will catch on. Below are the hardware spec solution that I personally would like to see become the standard.  If enough of the manufacturers implemented these specs to keep each other competitive, we would probably only see a modest increase in costs – probably in the $20-$40 range.

Atom D510 dual core CPU (or N300 for better TDP)
nVidia Ion2 built in (or Ion if the N300 is used)
11″ or 11.6″ screen at 1366×768
32GB SSD hard drives
Built in SIM for WWAN 3G+ access.
6-cell battery

I want to touch base on the 11″ screen choice.  I have a 10.1″ 1366×768 screen on my HP 2140.  I personally love it, but I do know that it’s too small for most people.  Increase in size by just a touch, but keep this resolution.  There’s no point in having the Ion do 720p decoding when you’ve only got a 1024×600 screen.  Having a 12″ screen starts to be too big for a “netbook size.”  You start getting into the regular laptop sizes at that point, and it pushes the prices up towards $550 or more, the same as the entry level laptops.

This is pretty much a ramble post, but I believe these points have some merit.  Netbooks are a great idea for portability, and they could be used for all a large majority of the productivity functions that people currently choose to use their laptops for, instead of a netbook.

All we need is for companies to give netbooks some proper TLC.

Fibre connections have been in existance for decades.  They are the backbone of the internet.  Since fibre connections are expensive (usually costing in excess of $1000/m for a 10Mbps bi-directional connection) only businesses have made wide-spread use of the technology.  There are fibre nodes in your neighbourhood already, likely within a block or two of your home, but it’s that “last mile” that’s been too costly for internet providers to build up to the home.  Its been easier to develop “channel bonding” technologies into the existing coax lines (which are already there for TV), rather than run new, expensive lines to everyone’s doorstep.  But as with everything in technology, there comes a breaking point that the costs are both manageable and profitable for wide scale deployment, and 2010 may just be that year.

So why would you need THAT much speed?  Isn’t your internet connection fast enough?  Well it is, for now.  The growing trend is that people are consuming television and movie media online, on demand, in high definition.  Services like Netflix (in the US) and CTV’s recent demonstration of live streaming their Olympic broadcasts online are examples of how people can consume media when they want it and how they want it.  There’s also podcasting and other non-traditional media that are using the internet as their delivery mechanism, and the internet service providers like Shaw are preparing for the possibilities.

Voice, video, and internet, can all be delivered through the same pipe, in real time, in high definition.  Imagine video conferencing with your parents that are in another province, from your living room on your big screen TV, and seeing each other in high definition.  Manufacturers like LG and Panasonic are already putting 720p cameras and conferencing software into their TVs to provide us this option.  Most North American homes don’t have a fast enough connection in both directions to get the full 720p clarity out of hardware like this, but for Korea & Japan, a capable connection is common place.

Shaw is future proofing.  Any good business does.

So with news like this, my biggest question becomes – who do I have to sweet talk at Shaw to get on the trail list??!!

The popular search results on the interwebs site the iphoneil.net repository as the fix.  While that might have worked for a select few in the beginning when they first launches their solution, the theory behind their resolution was flawed.  The keys used for the iphoneil fix were shared, so it was quite common to get other people’s push notifications on your phone, or not get them at all cause they were delivered to someone else.

Pushfix.info has the ultimate remedy.  Although it’s not free, the $6 price tag is well worth it to get this feature working again.   If submit your payment by Paypal or credit card, it will only take about 5 mins to get the feature working, and process is dead simple.

Provide your phone’s IMEI# on the purchase page, and submit your payment.  This info is required to generate unique push keys for your phone.  After your payment is submitted, add http://cydia.pushfix.info to your Cydia repositories.  Next, search for and install the PushFix package and all its dependencies.  Be sure you’re installing the package from the pushfix repository.  A PushFix application will get installed on your Springboard.  Launch this app and send a test push notification.  You should receive a reply shortly informing you that push is now working.  And you’re done!

Any additional info you may need regarding the product or how to install it is available on the creator’s main website, or in their detailed post on how to install the product.

My YouTube access broke after installing this fix, however, unlike push notifications, YouTube does not require unique keys.  The PushFix creator has provided 3 working keys that are available in the pushfix repository under YouTube Fix.  Simply add one of them (not all 3) to get access to YouTube back.

If your GPS stops working after installing PushFix, turn off Location Services, shut down the phone, wait 10 secs, and power on the power again.  After it’s back at the home screen for bout 30 secs, turn on Locations Services and then retest your GPS app.

WARNING!! YOU MAY LOOSE PRODUCTIVITY FROM FIXING PUSH NOTIFICATIONS!!!  As a consequence of having push on my phone now, my free time has been spent playing Words With Friends… Damn you addicting social games!!

You can grab yours for $199 on a 3yr contract, or $599 buy out. Motorola is also offering a free car mount kit for use with Google’s kick ass turn-by-turn GPS application that comes with Android 2.0.

I installed the same 32bit official release a couple of times, each time recreating the same problem, lock ups / kernel panics during file transfers.  What was causing the instability was likely the ZFS v6 packaged in FreeNAS.  I came to that conclusion after looking for a newer unofficial version of FreeNAS w/ZFS.  I stumbled across a build done by the same person that built the iSCSI code for FreeNAS.  The trail led to the Japanese developer’s site that had builds of FreeNAS w/ZFS v13 in both x86 and x64 flavors.  He goes by daoyama on the FreeNAS forums.

FreeNAS 0.72 w/ ZFS v13 – x86

FreeNAS 0.72 w/ ZFS v13 – x64

FYI – These links are to 7S build 5024.  The version I’m running is 7S build 4967.

I installed the x64 version of this developers build, re-setup the ZFS raid and started testing transfers again.  Rock.  Solid.  It’s be up for 24 days, and I’ve transferred over 300GB to it, including transfer sessions in excess of 40GB.  Maybe my hardware prefers the x64 flavor, but either way it’s working and I’m no longer worrying about stability.

If you’re interested in upgrading from your current ZFS v6 to a ZFS v13 build of FreeNAS, dnar2 has a walk through here:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=5598&hilit=zfs13&start=30

Offsite Backup

The next thing I will be looking for is cheap offsite backup solution that can be integrated into FreeNAS.  Any provider I’ve looked at is based on size, or is Windows based.  I may try mounting the NAS via iSCSI and transferring it that way using one of the Windows programs, but even these “unlimited” backup services have storage limits.  When it’s full, my NAS will have over 1.5TB, so if anyone knows of an offsite storage provider that won’t break the bank and allows that type of volume, drop me a line.

Some of the new improvements I’ve made include a live twitter feed and an iPhone / mobile phone friendly version.  I’ll also be able to post from anywhere through an iPhone app.  I was considering moving everything to squarespace.com to get some these features, but that would involve a lot of design time.

So here it is.  This should keep me motivated to keep posting.

Eager to take advatage of the $49 pre-order price tag of Windows 7, I hopped on over to Amazon.com to buy a copy.   That’s when I realized the truth.

It’s the upgrade disc, not the full install.
You will need an existing copy of Windows XP or Vista installed on your computer in order to even use the $49 disc.  Ask any computer professional, and they will tell you - using an upgrade disc is NOT how you should be upgrading your Windows OS.  ALWAYS format and start from scratch.

If you want a nice shiney clean installation of Windows 7, you’ll have to shell out $199 US for the retail version for that priviledge.

Only customers that don’t know any better will be getting the upgrade disc.  The market MS should be targeting are the IT professionals, and with this marketing “gotchya”, the pros are just going to wait for the OEM version.  Bucket o’ fail Microsoft.

Logic Supply now carries RAID5 daughter boards for most of their Jetaway motherboards.  This also just happens to be the same board type I bought for building the smoothie.  I added a 3x 10/100/1000 NIC as the daughtercard, which I could easily change over to this RAID5 daughtercard.

If you’re starting from scratch, here’s the parts list to build your own Mini-ITX RAID5 NAS:

Jetway J7F2WE-1G2 Mini-ITX Mainboard  – $169
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/j7f2we_1g2
Jetway 4x SATA Add-On Module with RAID Support (Marvell 88SE6145-TFE1) – $39
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/adpe4s
Emphase 40-pin Industrial Flash Disk Module 1 GB – $29
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/fdm40xdi1g
Chenbro ES34069 Mini-ITX Home Server/NAS Chassis – $205
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/es34069

Add to this:
- any four 3.5″ SATA hard drives of your choosing
- 1Gb of DDR2 RAM
- load er up with FreeNAS.

Welcome to RAID5 MiniITX bliss.

I’m still working through the how I’m going to put this into production with the hardware I currently have around the house, but eventually I’d like to:

- Convert my Smoothie into this FreeNAS box
- Use FreeNAS as an iSCSI target
- Load up ESXi on my current server hardware and point the storage volume to the FreeNAS iSCSI target
- Install pfsense as my router in a VM.
- Toy around with other VMs and ESXi to my heart’s content!

Downside?  I loose the PC aspect of my server.  It’s currently hooked up to my HDTV for watching MKVs & HD podcasts.  Anyone know if you can output a VM’s video to an HDTV?